Adding to its boast of having more sunshine hours than any other Scottish city, on Saturday September 15, Dundee will open the doors of the first V&A outside the mothership in London. You might well ask: ‘Why Dundee?’ Unbeknown to many, Dundee has long been a hotbed of innovation. It was the centre of the jute textile industry in the nineteenth century. More recent Dundonian creations include The Beano, marmalade, aspirin and the video game Grand Theft Auto. So strong is its relationship with design that, in 2014, it became the first city in the UK to receive Unesco City of Design status. The V&A Dundee is Scotland’s first design museum. The project has great social and economic ambition, too.

This is Japanese architect Kengo Kuma’s first permanent building in Britain, following his victory in an open competition held in 2010. Like much of Kuma’s work, the V&A Dundee has a wonderful quality that balances the monumental and the poetic. ‘The big theme for us was the conciliation between nature and architecture,’ he explains of his design. ‘From the beginning, I thought the building should be part of the landscape.’ The museum is a cornerstone of the £1 billion Waterfront regeneration project, which seeks to reconnect Dundee to its beautiful riverside setting, while simultaneously adding culture and business into the mix.

Stefan Ruiz

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‘Design is an exciting word in Dundee,’ says Anna Day, who runs Unesco Dundee City of Design. Its first design week was held in May 2016 and such was its success that this year it was a design month. ‘Dundee has always been creative – there’s an understanding here that design isn’t just lamps and chairs, it has a social objective, too. It is about how you make a doctor’s appointment, or how you communicate new drug treatments. The V&A is a huge deal for everyone here. It will raise our confidence and pride. I want it to give our children the ambition to do whatever they want.’

Kuma cites the dramatic cliffs of the Scottish east coast as his inspiration for the building’s intriguing façade, which is made up of 2,500 stone panels, each weighing two tonnes. Attached individually to the façade (this alone took seven months), the panels have a texture that glows and shines in the changeable east coast weather. It appears to ripple, reflecting the waters of the River Tay on which it sits. This effect softens the dramatic, angular shape of the building, which juts out vertiginously 20 metres over the water – an engineering feat that required draining part of the Tay to build foundations under the river.

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At times, it looks as if it might sail off – a nod to Dundee’s maritime heritage. Indeed, the museum’s quayside neighbour is Captain Scott’s RRS Discovery, on which he sailed to the Antarctic. Perhaps this is why the opening exhibition will be Ocean Liners: Speed and Style, which is sailing up north from London’s V&A, where it opened in February this year. Still, it is hard not to feel a little deflated that V&A Dundee’s inaugural show is a cast-off from its parent. However fitting the subject matter may be, one hopes that, in the future, Dundee will show groundbreaking exhibitions that have not been in London first.

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With a floor area of 8,500 square metres, the building comprises a main hall, learning centre, lecture theatre, restaurant and two large exhibition spaces – one for temporary inter-national exhibitions, the other for a permanent collection of 300 historical and contemporary Scottish design exhibits. One of the more ambitious will be Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s fully restored Oak Room. Designed in 1907 for Miss Cranston’s tearooms in Glasgow, it has languished in storage for 50 years.

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Besides the obvious economic boon of attracting a projected half a million visitors in its first year alone, there is a great sense that the V&A here is for the local population first and foremost. ‘Dundonians have a special energy and confidence,’ says Philip Howard, who is the former artistic director of the Dundee Rep Theatre. ‘It has an enlightened city council that believes culture can be a vehicle for urban regeneration and economic development. In many ways, it dreamed the V&A into Dundee. The belief is that it’ll raise the entire region.’

The mixed fortunes of introducing a world-class architectural monument to a small city has a precedent in Bilbao, where Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum opened over 20 years ago. It definitely put Bilbao on the map but, beyond tourism, it has not successfully kick-started wider urban regeneration. This is perhaps why Kuma has repeatedly described the V&A as a ‘living room for the city’ and not just an outpost of its parent down in London.

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One wonders if he uses the phrase ‘living room’ to refer more to a room that is alive than just a room in the house. Certainly the ambition for V&A Dundee is that it is less a passive repository of museum exhibits and more an active catalyst for future cultural development. Notably, the V&A has been careful to engage the local public at every step of the way so they feel that the museum belongs to them. The objective is for it to grow with its own relevant agenda, and not always feel beholden to the more top-down, institutional approach of the V&A in London.

Local opinion is enthusiastic and the mood is already one of pride that this is the start of an exciting new chapter, for both Dundee and Scottish cultural identity. As Anna says, ‘The V&A is a gift, but nobody thinks it’s a finishing point; it’s a moment on a much bigger journey.’ Kuma adds, ‘Scotland is a country blessed with a beautiful and distinctive landscape. I hope the V&A Dundee will help the Scottish people and their culture to strengthen their identity further.’

The V&A Dundee will open on September 15 with the exhibition ‘Ocean Liners: Speed and Style’, which runs until February 24, 2019; tickets £7-9. vam.ac.uk/dundee